1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device, such as a radio pager, for receiving, demodulating and decoding wireless broadcast messages including a series of characters from a predetermined character set, and displaying the message as a few lines on a display. The present invention also relates to such a device wherein messages of different types are broadcast and the device is programmed to recognize one or more addresses or identification codes in extracting message data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Radio pagers presently in use have multi-line LCD displays for received text or alphanumeric numeric messages, which displays have a fixed small number of lines, typically two to four lines, each with a fixed width of about 15 to 20 characters. The messages can vary over a wide range in length, ranging from those which fit on one line, such as a telephone number or a stock quote, to long data messages of up to for example 6,400 characters. When a received message contains more characters than can be displayed simultaneously, the message can be advanced line by line to achieve a vertical scrolling of the message.
Further, pagers may receive a plurality of different types of messages as a result of being preprogrammed with a plurality of respective different addresses or identification codes used to extract messages. Typically, the different addresses include an individual address for messages directed exclusively to the specific pager, and thereby to the individual user thereof, one or more group addresses for messages directed to a group of pagers or users, and one or more mail-drop addresses for subscription services of messages pertaining to news, sports, weather, stocks, etc, respectively.
The inventor herein has become aware that users frequently have difficulty in reading displayed messages on a multiline display of a modern pager, due to the relatively small size of the characters.
While the concepts of zooming and panning a display are well known for computer graphics displays, and have also been suggested for personal communicators including graphics displays (see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,384 to Allard et al.), such concepts are not generally applicable to radio pagers of a type having only a few lines of display for characters.